Robert Meyers, managing member and president of Republic Business Credit, discusses his over 10 years of SFNet involvement to where he is today, as well as his goals as SFNet’s incoming president, which include creating a larger and more inclusive community to benefit its members and accelerate access to those in need of capital.

Please provide our readers with some background on your involvement with SFNet over the years.
My first active SFNet volunteer memory was helping Terry Keating, CEO of Access Capital, co-chair a Midwest Chapter education event in 2013 with the various asset-based lending group heads in the Chicago area. As they say, “no good deed goes unpunished.” The following year, Amanda Roberts of RedRidge and Jim Low of Wintrust Business Credit, asked me to be the treasurer of the Secured Finance Network’s Midwest Chapter. I don’t think I fully appreciated at the time that once you say ‘yes’ to the first post, it was actually a four-year commitment, however, I would do it again in a heartbeat as it ended up being a really fun ride with an amazing group.

The Chapter vice president role then followed, and I became the Midwest Chapter president in 2016. In addition to supporting the launch of the Chapter’s Women in Secured Finance Group, we massively increased the number of volunteers, committees and sponsorship.  With more engagement across our community, we launched quarterly leadership meetings to build on our momentum. Thanks to the efforts of those 30 or 40 people, combined with all the amazing volunteers that followed, it is one of the largest and most vibrant SFNet chapters.  

But, in true SFNet fashion, the ink wasn’t even dry on my Chapter president year when I got a call from the incoming SFNet national president, Andrea Petro, who at the time was running Wells Fargo’s Lender Finance group, and said the Board was updating its governance and wanted to chart a new course for the future of the Secured Finance Network.  As is common with many organizations, we needed clearer roles and expectations for our volunteers to be successful. SFNet wanted to move to a 14-person Executive Committee with each having a specific purpose while representing one of the various constituencies of our community. They wanted me to launch the Association’s national Young Professionals group, building upon the great success we had seen in the Chapters’ young professional-focused programming, which today is referred to as Emerging Leaders.

Our first national conference for young professionals had around 100 people attend from across the country, known as the YoPro Leadership Summit, held in 2018 at Winston & Strawn in Chicago. The second year it had more than 150 people in attendance. We’ve continued to hold the Summit across the country, and it is now called the Emerging Leaders Summit. I’m excited that we’re going to be having one in Boston in spring 2025. The best sign of a healthy organization is having the right group of leaders and volunteers gathered together for a common purpose. The founding principle of stewardship is leaving things better for the next generation of leaders. Kat Parker, director of Business Development at HYPERAMS LLC and Will Bence, managing director of Wingspire, both have served as chairs of the YoPro Committee and it is so cool to see what the group has done. It surpassed all of our expectations and clearly has real staying power, continuing to thrive as it moves around the country. Attendance continues to grow, and it provides an opportunity for people to get involved as a sponsor, panelist, attendee or a volunteer. For many, it is their first experience with our community.   

After three years as chair of the YoPro Committee, I was asked to chair the SFNet Annual Convention in New Orleans in 2020. Everyone first imagined an opening reception at the World War II Museum or Preservation Hall with live music and second-line bands, however, despite our early plans, none of those options were available to us due to the pandemic, and we completely pivoted to a virtual event with more than 2,000 attendees. It wasn’t as good as getting together in person, of course, but I think we absolutely made the most of it, and we had a lot of first-time convention attendees, cameo appearances and video interludes as well as about 40 different panels.  The ability to include so many people was the best part of the 2020 virtual convention and why we continue to provide virtual engagement opportunities to supplement our in-person programming when it makes sense. It became more approachable and more inclusive, giving people an opportunity to get involved or experience it, to laugh, meet new people, and build business connections.

The final two years of my six years on the Executive Committee were spent leading the SFNet’s Entrepreneurial Finance Committee, which helps plan a conference for 5060 presidents and CEOs around the country to get together and talk about the challenges and opportunities facing our independent finance community.  

How has your involvement in SFNet impacted you professionally and personally? I think a lot of perspective depends on your expectations when you start something. I was lucky to have recently acquired Republic Business Credit before I joined the Executive Committee in 2016, so I had the full support of our incredible team and it joined with Republic’s strategy to bring our platform national. I consider myself very fortunate. Many people would call me crazy for buying a finance company at 32 years old, but my whole perspective has been that we can build something better, together, and create an opportunity for everyone to be successful.  I had so much help along the way, whether it was a phone call or an introduction or shared experiences across our community of both successes and, more importantly, failures. Looking back professionally, one of the largest impacts has been the SFNet community of mentors, coaches, friends and caring people, and they appreciate that I’m giving back to our trade association as our way of paying it forward to the next generation.

SFNet’s outgoing president, Barry Bobrow, does large syndication deals for some of the largest banks in the world, and Republic Business Credit focuses on the lower middle market. In the finance world our paths would not have crossed without our mutual desire to pay it forward through the Secured Finance Network. 

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